White Christmas in Piemont, Italy

This year we experience a white Christmas again, fortunately it's only a few inches of snow this time, unlike last year when we had one snow storm after the other.

Happy Holidays

Wild Boar

A while ago we received a gift from one of the hunters: pieces of a wild boar they shot on our hills and that's what we had for dinner this evening.

Delicious !

A Google Map of the Regional Park of Piana Crixia

Regional Park of Piana Crixia weergeven op een grotere kaart

Enjoying the views, the sun and my dog

Pictures of my walk with the dog yesterday. At the moment we have perfect december days: blue sky and mild temperatures, but ... sunday it will be snowing !

Arenzano

Sunday we explored Arenzano, a coastal town in Liguria, Italy.
This ancient fishing village is now a seaside resort and a popular holiday resort for Italians, close to Genoa.

The little streets are very charming with a lot of medieval accents: votive niches, ancient portals and small squares.
The city hall is situated in an elegant park with rare trees. Here you can also find a centuries-old watch tower, build to prevent sudden incursions of pirates and a monumental glass and wrought iron green house. The city has a lot of villas and prestigious residences.

Arenzano has one of the most popular sanctuaries in Liguria: The Santuario del Bimbo di Praga.

The first snow of 2009

A week later than last year and fortunately many centimeters less !

Flower Riviera Cycle Path

Once upon a time, an unsightly train line ran on the sinuous coastline between San Lorenzo al Mare and Ospedaletti, looming large and metallic over the cobalt sea. Several years and an enlightened administration later, the railway line has been moved inland, and the former tracks have been turned into a 24-km route open to ramblers and cyclists.

The views along the way are enchanting, with verdant trees and pretty villages on one side and wavelets lapping the foot of the trail on the other. Four large terraces allow visitors to rest and make the most of the panorama. Bikes are available to rent at either end of the track, making it perfect for families and occasional cyclists. Die-hard ones, though, can continue on to the 2,000 km of the Alpi del Mare route, which starts from sea level and climbs all the way up the mountains.

http://www.verdita.com/

http://www.casamare.net/en/news/?p=53

Acqui e Sapori - Acqui Terme

Every year in november there's a food fair in Acqui Terme: "Acqui e Sapori" with on sunday a truffle exhibition.

I made some pictures to give you an idea:

Wine: visit to cantina La Maranzana

It doesn't matter if you're into wine or not, when you live in a wine region like ours wine becomes part of your life. But I don't think that's a big problem for most of us ;-)

Sunday we were invited at cantina La Maranzana, in the middle of the most beautiful vineyards you can imagine. It was foggy, so we weren't lucky with the views, but we had our own private tour in the cantina and they spoiled us with food and wine. The best of all : if we ask them, they will organise also a private tour of the cantina for our guests.

Following other blogs (part 1): Casa Dolcetto

Like a lot of other people I love to follow blogs. They give you new insights, they reveal little gems to visit and offer a lot of usefull information.
I'm particularly interested in blogs from people who live in the neighboorhood. As I only moved here in june 2008 I still have a lot to explore and then it's easy to use other blogs for finding out what the possibilities are.

One of the blogs I discovered is the one from "Casa Dolcetto": http://casadolcetto.blogspot.com.
If you want to visit Piedmont, there are some interesting articles you can read:

• Top 10 tips for Turin: http://casadolcetto.blogspot.com/2009/10/top-10-tips-for-turin.html
• Reflections of Bergolo: http://casadolcetto.blogspot.com/2009/10/reflections-of-bergolo.html
• Truly Truffle Town (about Alba): http://casadolcetto.blogspot.com/2009/10/truly-truffle-town.html
• A brief look at Cuneo: http://casadolcetto.blogspot.com/2009/01/brief-look-at-cuneo.html

Do you know other interesting blogs I could follow?

Truffles

May I present you, Roberto, one of our local truffle hunters. These days you can't find him home most of the times, because it's truffle season. For him, it's not only a way to make money, but it's his passion and that you can see because he love sharing his stories about truffles and he shows people how he finds them. That's rare in a profession like his, because we're talking about big money.


Did you know that in Alba they just sold a truffle of 750 gr. for 100 000 euro?

Well, knowing this, you can imagine that most truffle hunters aren't very willing to share their secrets. Villagers told us there was even a man who wore his boots in the wrong direction so that others wouldn't know where he went !

But Roberto is different. Ok, he will not show the most secret places but since we opened our agriturismo he took a lot of our guests on a truffle walk and showed them how his dogs find these expensive delicacies.

Bomba di riso

Today I made a bomba di riso, ... why they call it a bomb?

Well, I think I understand now after eating it: the amount of cheese in it make it, well, very very heavy.

But it's delicious, and that's what food is all about in my opinion. Sorry, no counting calories for me.

Una domenica in campagna

A nice initiative in our neighboorhood "Una domenica in campagna" at the Cantina La Maranzana.


Every sunday in november you can enjoy a free degustation of their wines and for those who want there's the possibility to eat a lunch with truffles in one of the agriturismo's in the neighboorhood.


There are a lot of events around wine in our region and we haven't seen a lot of tourists visiting them yet.

Our Lavender Farm

Since last week we can call ourselves an organic Lavender Farm, 25 000 plants we have now !
First we had to plant the rows of lavender with a tractor, now we're controlling every plant and putting in the ones we have forgotten + some extra.

I look forward to see them grow in the spring, our own lavenderfields !

Twitter and Facebook

Now summer is over and guests are gone, I take the time to familiarize myself with new things, like twitter. Joined today and not sure if it's something interesting or just a waste of time. We'll see, I'm a bit of a computernerd so love to find new internet-things to do.
If you want to follow me on twitter: http://twitter.com/AgriVerdita

We also have a group on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/search/?q=agriturismo+verdita&init=quick#/group.php?gid=66232584198&ref=search&sid=1347408835.1456215010..1
Thanks to Facebook I have more contact with people in Belgium (where I come from) than when I lived there. Strange, isn't it?

Something completely different: tomorrow we start planting our lavender, then we will really be a lavenderfarm. Very excited about this !

Mushrooms

At the moment there's an obsession for mushroom-hunting here in the village. The woods are ful of the most delicious porcini and other mushrooms that I don't know the name of, but they sure taste good !

Of course we have done our part of searching. The first times we walked miles and miles without seeing or recognising anything. After a while I think the people here got a little tired of seeing us like this and one day we got visit from someone who wanted to show me which mushrooms are edible. And since then I fill my basket with the most delicious species.

Of course after the walk I have to prepare them. This means we eate a lot of them during the last days and I have a full freezer.

Really love this ! Walking around, collecting food and preparing the most wonderful dishes with it.

Interesting articles

Surfing around on the web I found some interesting articles about places you can easily visit while staying at Agriturismo Verdita:

Alba & Asti in 48 hours: http://www.italia-magazine.com/alba-and-asti-in-48-hours
Both cities are ca. 1 hour from our place.

Genova in 48 hours: http://www.italia-magazine.com/holidays/liguria/genova-in-48-hours
Genova is about 1 hour and 15 minutes from our agriturismo.

Truffle Fairs in the Province of Asti (Piedmont) 2009

National Truffle Fairs



18 and 25 october in Moncalvo

8 november in Montiglio Monferrato



Regional Truffle Fairs



4 and 11 october in Montiglio Monferrato

8 november in Canelli

14 and 15 november in Asti

Medieval festivities in Cassine

http://www.festamedioevale.it/

Guardian article

A Guardian article about walking holidays in autumn that also mentions Piemonte as interesting destination: http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2009/sep/05/walking-holidays-autumn

The hills of Italy's Piedmont region are thankfully on the gentle, rolling side
- conquerable for even the wooziest of ramblers, who have over-indulged on
the area's delicious barolo and barbera wines.

Fun begins !

Now the renovation works are done and guests are enjoying the apartments and our lovely region, we realise that this was why we chose this work: making people happy, is sooo much fun !
Some pictures of our agriturismo :

Walking through the Calanche

Every now and then our little village organises excursions through the surrounding Calanche, a protected nature phenomen, these are grey and naked hills that look like slate.

Some pictures of the last time :